MEDIA WATCH--In the wake of major league baseball abandoning Georgia to protest their new voter-suppression laws, a GOP that incessantly rants about "cancel culture" has continued its death spiral with increasingly crackpot attacks on things they used to love they now want to cancel - baseball, corporations, free speech, OMG the Easter Bunny - with sinister portents pickleball, apple pie, water polo or barbecues could be next. (Photo above: Fidel at (communist) bat.)
MLB's conscientious decision to re-locate their All-Star Game and draft, made after always-dangerous "thoughtful conversations" with players and management, has shifted the focus of right-wing hysteria against all things "woke" from football - always suspect given all those black guys, never mind that SOB Kaepernick - to, shockingly, "America's game," even though it's still pretty white so you'd think it would be okay.
Evidently intent on cancelling themselves by exposing their utter political and moral bankruptcy, the GOP has responded to the move with feverish and, even for them, staggeringly stupid attacks on "the liberal mob," "leftist loons," and, drawing a very wobbly line to a new deal with China to stream games, "the genocidal Communist Party of China," wait, what?!
"THREE STRIKES YOU'RE OUT MLB" shrieks a GOP tweet that frenziedly goes on to list their crimes: "A deal with a company in China backed by the COMMUNIST PARTY," "They've played games in Cuba with a COMMUNIST REGIME in power," and - not The Onion - "They require PHOTO ID to pick up tickets from will call." Talk about genocidal.
There's more. The Cuba-hating former guy urged his 17 remaining fans to boycott baseball. Jesus-loving, ever-offensive Mike Huckabee wrote, "Breaking wind from CNN! Coke will announce name change to 'Woke-A-Cola.'" Ms. QAnon Three Names celebrated GOP unity against "corporate communism."
Brian Kemp, architect of Georgia's travesty, said MLB's "knee-jerk decision (means) woke political activists are coming for every aspect of your life" and, in a stunning pot/kettle twist, "If the left doesn't agree with you, facts and the truth do not matter," citing Biden/Abrams lies about "a bill that expands access to the ballot box."
His own lies have proved unconvincing: A majority of "avid" baseball fans say they support the move; so do about 200 companies, including Delta, Home Depot, AT&T and Woke-A-Cola, prompting a fat-cat-led GOP long sustained by corporations to suddenly turn on them and a you've-gotta-be-kidding hypocritical Mitch McConnel, whose PAC just took in $475 million of corporate cash, to proclaim companies should "stay out of politics." R-I-G-H-T.
Online, many wondered why in Trumpism's final death thrash it's only cancel culture if the left does it, why a party long backing a Russian asset now thinks it can play the tired communist card against a private organization exercising its right to free speech, why the GOP is "painting themselves into a corner where nobody wants to visit, let alone live." "I see we've moved from Caravan Monday to Communism Tuesday," noted one.
Also, "Even the MLB lets people drink water." Still, because faux outrage is all they have left, it keeps spewing. The latest target: An Easter photo of the Bidens and the Easter Bunny, all masked. "THEY PUT A MASK ON THE BUNNY," they howled of "mind control" by the "#DemocratCommunistParty."
"Such sick people." True, that.
(CityWatch guest columnist Abby Zimet writes for CommonDreams.org … where this piece was first posted.)
-cw
